Career: De Niro made a handful of films in the 1960s and early 1970s, but it wasn't until 1973's Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets (his first collaboration with Martin Scorsese) that his career took off. He received an Oscar for The Godfather Part II a year later and was nominated Academy Awards for Taxi Driver and The Deer Hunter, and took home his second Oscar for Raging Bull. The King of Comedy, Once Upon A Time in America, Brazil, The Mission, Angel Heart and The Untouchables followed. Over the past few decades, De Niro has made crowd pleasers such as Cape Fear, Casino, Heat, Meet the Parents and Analyze This, as well as directing A Bronx Tale and The Good Shepherd. He gave a fabulous comic performance in the fantasy movie Stardust, before starring alongside fellow big-screen icon Al Pacino in cop thriller Righteous Kill. His more recent films have included Silver Linings Playbook and The Family.

Career: After landing roles in off-Broadway productions, Keitel met Martin Scorsese, an up-and-coming filmmaker, who cast him in his student project before handing him the lead in Mean Streets (1973). Despite an amazing performance, it was co-star Robert De Niro who profited most. Keitel's career took something of a nosedive toward the end of the 1970s, but received a shot in the arm in 1992 thanks to the films Bad Lieutenant and Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. This made him hot property, with Keitel going on to star in films such as The Piano (1993), Cop Land (1997), From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and National Treasure (2004) and its 2007 sequel. He also appeared in the short-lived US version of Life On Mars. More recently, he has starred in Inglourious Basterds (2009), Little Fockers (2010), Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).